Friday, November 06, 2009

Bodies

With the holiday season arriving, we are beginning to hear complaints (though not too seriously) about the foods available. In Canada, Christmas baking is BIG – shortbread, cookies, fudge, fruit cake, butter tarts, mincemeat tarts, homemade truffles, lots of chocolates of all kinds …. Anyone besides me drooling yet? Oh – and eggnog – yumm! Some of us women joke that we might as well glue it to our hips since we feel that’s where it will show up anyway. Last year I heard myself saying “All I have to do is look at the holiday goodies and I gain weight.” And the Universe said “Yes, my darling,” and so I did.

Magazines are now coming out with articles about weight programs for the holidays. Indeed weight loss is one of the biggest money making ventures around. Open any magazine, or go to your local bookstore and see how many different ideas there are about weight loss for both women and men.

Yes, at the bottom of all of our concerns about our bodies are ideas – ideas we’ve accepted according to where we live and what’s in style. Ideas that are based in fear – fear that we won’t be pretty or handsome enough, fear that we won’t be acceptable in society - plain old fear of not being enough!

Nithya Shanti, a spiritual teacher in India, wrote as his status line on Facebook one day: “Our bodies are magnificent. They are condensed Divinity. There is nothing in them at all to despise or be embarrassed about. Any cultural or religious ideas to the contrary can safely be abandoned at once.”

The Ancient Hawaiians believed the bigger you were the more mana you had (mana = spiritual power). Our bodies are condensed Divinity – or we could say thick thought. How does this idea change the way you will see yourself the next time you look in the mirror?

Looking at my body from this perspective erases the guilt of holiday eating. I will be conscious about what I’m eating and I will allow myself the pleasure of experiencing this once-a-year feasting.

Together, let’s abandon the fears of not being enough because of what we look like. Let’s enjoy being in a body. It’s an amazing self-repairing earth suit, designed by us, with abilities to experience the world we’re creating through our senses! It is God coalesced into form for our adventure here called Life.

SPIRITUAL MIND TREATMENT

There is only One Life – God’s Life. I am an expression of this One Life, living in a body I have created with my thoughts to be here now.

How grateful I am for every cell of this body. I have eyes that see, ears that hear, a nose that smells, a tongue that tastes, and hands that touch—and these things that allow me to experience through my senses are only a tiny part of the wonderful organism that I am. I am grateful for my skeletal structure, my muscles, and tendons. I am grateful for all the organs that are within me and the work they do for me automatically. I am grateful for the blood that moves through my body, bringing oxygen and removing that which is no longer necessary. I am grateful for my brain and all the electrochemical activities that run the body.

I now let go of any negative thinking I have been doing about my body. I choose to see it as the condensed Divinity It is. I am grateful that I now realize that this body is truly the Temple of the Most High.

The I AM that I am loves and nourishes and uses this body with great respect. I see this reflected in the way I treat my body. It is God in form.

I release these words into the Law of Mind, knowing they are planted deep within my subjective mind, becoming a builder of my universe, and this is good, very good. And so it is.